Westminster Abbey

This is the view of the Abbey from the Nave exit, where you leave once you're finished with your tour. The more famous view is of the left side, where the Rose Window is above the great door. I'll show you a picture of that on my entry for Saturday.
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October 19, 2006

I got up on the day of my tutorial and decided that I wanted to do something really exciting before having to find out my grade on my first essay. I hopped onto the tube at Euston Square Station and got off at the St. James stop, a short walk from Westminster Abbey, Parliament and Big Ben, the London Eye, the Thames River and, obviously, St. James Park and Buckingham Palace. I took a quick right and walked right up to Westminster Abbey, my morning’s destination.

It's definitely worth a trip to London.

I asked a little Spanish couple if they could take a picture of me in the cloisters of the Abbey. Oddly enough, I think I am actually standing on a plague that marks the grave of 40 or so monks who died of the plague while living at Westminster. Weird. But oddly appropriate, since I spent the entire week studying diaries and testaments of the Great Plague in London.
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The church was really amazing, and I took a self-guided tour which lasted me about 2 hours, though I really rushed because I didn’t want to be late for the meeting with my professor. It was amazingly empty that morning, as the crowds of people were limited to guide tours and the individual observers that were walking around me were very few.

I am sorry that I cannot show you more specifically all the things that I saw, but the church does not allow photography and there would be so much to say that nobody would ever read this to its end!

I really like this picture, because it gives you a sense of just how large the Abbey is. Most of my pictures are cool, just because the Abbey is in them, but this one really makes you feel as though you could fall backwards just trying to tilt your head far enough back to see the top of the towers and sculptures. Neat. :)
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So, just a few special points of interest…

I especially loved the memorial to the Nightingale family. It is set in a little chapel just on your left as you walk down the left aisle of the main transept of the abbey. The chapel is that of St. Michel, I believe, and is filled from wall to wall with monuments to various families who have consecrated tombs to their loved ones over the centuries (some are as old as the foundations of the church itself, which was built starting with William the Conqueror’s ascension in 1066). The mother of Washington Nightingale died while giving birth to him and, in his will, he ordered that the monument be erected in her memory. In the monument, his father stands protecting his mother, who has fallen to the ground in fear of the skeleton before her, a figure of death who has climbed out from the underworld and is attacking her with a sword. It’s really somewhat morbid but is also an amazing sculpture all done in marble- both the Nightingale parents and their son are buried underneath it.

My other favorite part of the church was the Chapter House. It sits along the left side of the cloisters in the back of the Abbey and is a kind of stand-alone room. The room is a large circle with all the walls being made up of stained glass and the ceiling supported by one large column coming right down through the center of the room. This room is only open on sunny days, since natural light is the only way to see in it. But compared to the crowded and chaotic nature of the Abbey itself, however beautiful, the Chapter House was really an amazing retreat. I stood in it for about 15 minutes without anyone else coming in, and I just walked around in the light of the stained glass, looking at the centuries old watercolor paintings that have been unearthed behind many newer layers of stone. It may have been my favorite part of the Abbey.

I also particularly enjoyed Poet’s Corner. This area of the church holds the graves of Geoffrey Chaucer, Percy Shelley, John Dryden, Edmund Spenser, Alfred Tennyson, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy (one of my favorite novelists) and many more famous writers- these are just the ones that I can remember and have studied.

A few more highlights: the tombs of Elizabeth I and Mary I, along with that of Mary Queen of Scots, the High Altar, the Rose Window, Scientist’s Corner (Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin lie here), and the Cloisters. I wish I could go into detail about all of these, but I probably shouldn’t write a novel in the span of a daily diary entry. (Plus I plan on taking my parents when they get here- and I don’t want to spoil everything!)

In total, the abbey was honestly the most wonderful thing I have seen in my life, no exaggeration. I cannot wait for Heather to visit, and then my parents, so I have an excuse to go there a few more times before leaving London.

Ha- I just remembered this funny little story. On my way out of the church, this little chaplain (I think he was a chaplain, but I’m sure he could’ve been something else) was being asked by an elderly American woman where she could use the restroom. She was looking across the large square outside of the Abbey and asking about a building on the other side. All I remember hearing is this little Irish/Scottish (not sure which) church man explaining to her that she shouldn’t go there to use the restroom, because the sign on the building said “TO LET” and not “TOILET”. I started giggling and kept on my merry way. It was an oddly memorable thing to hear.

After browsing through the shop and pulling myself away from a terribly expensive book of photographs of the Abbey, I went to the meeting with my tutorial professor and had an hour and a half discussion about Daniel Defoe, Samuel Pepys, and issues of authorship in their respective chronicles of the Great Plague. It was awfully fun having a full-blown discussion with a professor, one-on-one. I guess I can now understand why the tutorial system at University College makes the school so unique and envied for its English Department. Anyway, I got a decent grade on my paper and spent the next few hours just sitting around and thinking about my experience at the Abbey, every moment of which I will be playing over in my head again and again. I only hope that some of you will also be able to see it one day- it’s definitely worth a trip to London.

Cheers!

Jessica

P.S. The sheer number of monuments and tombs in this building is really amazing- sorry I don’t have any pictures though. You can look the images up online, however, especially at http://www.westminster-abbey.org if you’re interested.